Fuller On Trekking and 'Heroes'

Bryan Fuller may have jumped ship from Star Trek most recently to produce Heroes, NBC's new hit superhero show, but he still has strong feelings about Star Trek after having first come aboard when a Deep Space Nine spec script got him an invitation to pitch stories.

"I really didn't want to be a television writer as much as I wanted to be a 'Star Trek' writer," Fuller admitted to Comic Book Resources. "I had every action figure." Even so, he got bored after several years of working on the show, "doing the same types of stories" all the time, so he wrote the script that became the Dead Like Me pilot. That, and Wonderfalls, cemented his reputation in the business.

Fuller believes that the Star Trek franchise is "desperate" for reinvention and is looking forward to J.J. Abrams' film. "Basically what happened to the franchise was that it was in the hands of people who had done their thing with it and were continuing to do their thing with it and weren't looking to expand," he said. "The reason 'Star Trek' was withering on the vine for so long was because it wasn't getting enough nourishment, and J.J. Abrams is going to give it that burst of energy that it needs and it deserves."

Abrams is reportedly planning a prequel film about Kirk and Spock, but that captain-crewmember dynamic does not interest Fuller as much as the relationship between Janeway and Seven of Nine. "Kirk and Spock have a great dynamic and I want to see them have adventures, but if you want to see me captivated and want me to continue watching as you pull back the layers of the onion then I think that Seven of Nine and Janeway's relationship was much more complicated," he said. "I loved Kirk and Spock. I love Picard and Data, even though they were just a variation on Kirk and Spock."

Deep Space Nine remains Fuller's favourite among the second-generation Star Trek shows because of its character work, though he felt "there was no iconic relationships on 'Deep Space Nine' because all the characters were so strong". Janeway interested him because she was so much more flawed than other Star Trek captains and her reactions were emotional, though he admits that the series came under criticism for that very reason.

With Dead Like Me, Fuller left the show midway through the first season after fighting with studio executives about how the show should be produced, then went to produce Wonderfalls, which was very well reviewed but also encountered problems from the top, such as a lesbian storyline that made the network uneasy. "We decided that we needed to make it a miniseries because we wouldn't have more than 13 episodes and we made those 13 episodes sing. We had a beginning, middle and end," he said.

Heroes, which has been picked up for the season, attracted Fuller because of "the themes of destiny and fate and our individual roles in the universe" which he says is something he relates to and thinks are present in his other shows. "My title is consulting producer, but I'm actually working full-time on the show. There are a lot of times where it's seven days a week and I'm only supposed to be here three days a week but I love the show and I love the writing staff," he added.

The writers on the series work on different scenes, "then we take those scenes, put them together, read the script, give the episode's writer our notes and that is the process", he explained. Fuller has particularly taken to the character of Claire, the immortal cheerleader.

The full interview with Fuller is here.

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